Frequently Asked Questions
This is total personal preference. If you want to focus on a single park each day, and don’t have any desire to hop elsewhere for a meal or to get on a ride, then you probably don’t need a park hopper. If you want to see more than one park in the day, or want to do dinner in Epcot after a morning in Magic Kingdom, then a park hopper is for you.
Some pros and cons of park hoppers:
Pros:
Allows you to visit more than one park per day, you can even visit all four if you’d like!
If your morning park has very long waits, but other parks don’t have nearly as long waits, you can hop to a different park to take advantage of the lower waits.
You have more options for meals, Epcot is a great place for dinner, but for many it’s not a full park day.
You snagged a VQ for Guardians of the Galaxy, but Epcot is not your booked park for the day.
You’re not stuck in a park with multiple rides down for hours. (sad I have to write this, but have experienced it before!)
Cons:
It’s more expensive.
Hopping between parks can take some time.
It may be trying to do too much for first time park goers.
Not necessarily! Rides will go down for a variety of reasons throughout the day, such as storms being in the area for outdoor attractions. While a ride may show that it is temporarily unavailable at the moment, unless it is down for a refurbishment, it will likely come back up that day. You can find a list of all the rides that are down for refurbishment on the Official Disney Website.
The App Shows a Ride is Temporarily Closed, will it be down for my trip?
Are Park Hoppers Worth it?
DAS is a disability service that Disney offers that allows approved individuals, and up to five other guests, to use the Lightning Lanes to access rides after waiting a certain amount of time based on the current wait time for the ride. It is to help those who are unable to wait in long lines wait for their turn to ride outside the physical line. The individual with the DAS is required to ride the rides you use the DAS, the cast member at the entrance will use a photograph of the individual to make sure they are going on the ride.
There are two ways to sign up for DAS, either prior to your trip via an online chat or in person at the parks. The pre-trip sign-up can be completed 30 days prior to your trip up to two days ahead of time.
Click here for additional information on DAS.
What is DAS?
I Want to rope drop Epcot from the back of the park to be closer to Remy’s, how do I do that?
To enter through the back of the park, aka International Gateway, you have a few options. First, is to be staying at one of the Epcot area resorts (Boardwalk, Beach Club, Yacht Club, Swan, Dolphin). From those resorts you simply walk over to the International Gateway or take the boat. For those staying elsewhere, you can either park or take a rideshare to Hollywood Studios, then either take the skyliner, the boat, or walk over to the International Gateway. Parking at the Disney owned Epcot resorts is not allowed unless you are staying at them or have a dining reservation, and rideshares are also not permitted to drop people off at these resorts either without either a hotel or dining reservation. Yes, there are some guards who have let occasional people in without reservations, but it is not the norm and is against the rules, in our experiences they are very strict to the point they wouldn’t let us in once when we actually were staying there.
Let me preface this by saying that Disney World is crowded pretty much year round these days. Don’t expect to go during a “light crowd” week and have the parks to yourself. Actual light crowds are a rare find! The last time I saw actual light crowds since 2017 was the first day the parks opened after being shut down for a hurricane.
That being said, there are some times during the year where the crowds are a bit lower than others. The end of August and the first few weeks of September are some of the slowest weeks of the year. The later in September you go, the more crowded it gets, the last week of the month is starting to see the same crowds as holiday weeks as some school systems now have fall break that week and many online groups recommend coming this week.
Other slower times are the last week of October and the very beginning of November before Jersey Week. January can be slow if you avoid the race weekend (you can find the race schedule on the runDisney website) and large cheer/dance competitions. You may get lucky in early February, but it can be a gamble since schools in the north-east (and likely elsewhere) have a week off for February break and the parks get very crowded during that week. The spring is hit or miss, April is usually very crowded with all the various spring breaks happening around the country, but if Easter falls early in the year, late April may not be bad crowd-wise. Just remember, many schools in Massachusetts have their spring break based on when Patriots day is instead of Easter, so that could impact crowds. The summer, while not low crowd, is actually not horrible crowd-wise compared to other weeks of the year such as Columbus day week and other holidays.
Lastly, while crowd calendars can be helpful, they aren’t as accurate as in the past. In the pre-Covid days the crowds were seemingly easier to predict, nowadays it’s really anyone’s guess. With more and more school districts having various breaks throughout the year, the ability to work remotely, and parents being more willing to take kids out of school, what had been historically low crowd weeks are now becoming mid to heavy crowd weeks. So if there is a particular time of year that is best for you to visit, don’t worry too much about the crowds and have a decent touring plan to make the most of your trip.
When are the least busy times to visit?
How do I use Lightning Lane?
Lightning Lane Multi Pass/Single Pass is the newest skip the line system. It is similar to the older Fastpass+ system where you book ride return times prior to your vacation, however like Genie+ is now a paid system.
Click here for additional information on Lightning Lane Multi Pass/Single Pass.
It depends. Certain tickets now no longer need park reservations, such as date based tickets (including Disney hotel/ticket packages). Other types of tickets, such as APs still require park reservations with some caveats such as good to go days. Disney has a list on their website on which tickets currently require reservations to be made.